MINISTER LAUNCHES GREENING GHANA DAY AT YEFRI (PAGE 46)

THE Minister of Lands and Natural Resources, Alhaji Collins Dauda, at the weekend, launched this year’s Greening Ghana Day at Yefri, near Nkoranza in the Brong Ahafo Region, with a call on the youth and key institutions to start engaging in a massive tree planting exercise throughout the country to help resuscitate the depleted and degraded forest resources.
The theme for the launch was; “The role of the youth in Greening Ghana”.
The minister disclosed that there were about 5,170,916 schoolchildren in the primary, junior high and senior high levels and that, if each of those children were encouraged to plant at least one tree per quarter per year, it meant that Ghana would have about 20,683,664 trees every year. In that regard, he said his ministry was making the necessary arrangements for schools and their pupils/students who would do well in the planting of more trees to be given awards.
“I, therefore, call on the heads of schools to join me to encourage schoolchildren to learn the culture of growing trees, because it is important to encourage the youth who form a greater proportion of the working population of Ghana to engage in tree planting exercise,” Alhaji Dauda appealed.
The minister, who is also the Member of Parliament (MP) for Asutifi South, explained that in the current circumstances of high youth unemployment rate, the Greening Ghana programme provided a good opportunity to offer greater employment to the youth, and consequently, generate wealth, thereby reducing poverty in many communities.
According to the minister, the devastating effects of forest degradation, especially during the past two decades, were beginning to manifest in the seeming extinction of premium timber species, such as Odum, Mahogany, Sapele and many others, resulting in the drastic reduction in the raw material base of the timber industry, loss of biodiversity, drying up of water bodies as well as the loss of tourist sites, which were all important sources of national revenue.
The acting Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the Forestry Commission (FC), Mr Alhassan N. Attah, disclosed that the FC, under the supervision of the ministry, was pursuing major programmes in addressing the problems of forest and wildlife resource depletion and environment degradation in the country.
The programmes, he said, were focused primarily towards securing the national resource base, developing the natural resource base and optimising the flow of benefits from the resource to the country and, particularly, to the resource owners.
Mr Attah explained that the Greening Ghana Day was actually to announce to the general public about the suitable period for tree planting and to encourage as many people as possible to plant trees each day.
Kwadwo Nyamekye-Marfo, the Brong Ahafo Regional Minister, in his welcoming address, condemned the activities of chainsaw operators in the country, saying that such nefarious activities had contributed significantly to the depletion of the country’s forest resources while bush and wild fires were also contributory factors as well as continuous farming activities.
A Member of the Council of State, Mr J.H. Owusu-Acheampong, who chaired the function, also appealed to heads of institutions, opinion leaders and all other stakeholders to spearhead the crusade to plant more trees, since that was the only way the Greening Ghana programme could be realised.